Collaborative Community Builder A Digital Platform for Crowd-Sourcing a Community Vision

Bowen Hui1 & Wayne Kelly2

1.  Dept. of Computer Science, University of British Columbia 2.  Dept. of Political Science & Sociology, National University of Ireland Presented at: The 2nd Virtual GOCICT 2015, Sullivan University November 4th, 2015

Outline

Opportunity for digitization

Requirements

Solution

Next Steps

Opportunity for Digitization

How can we improve the Community Development visioning process?

Creating a Community Vision

Critical first step for communities. Guides future development. The more inclusive the better. Broad inclusion is expensive and lengthy.

Frank & Smith, 1999, pg 28

An example of

effective inclusion in community planning and

visioning

Can digitization increase participation in community visioning while reducing costs and time constraints?

Requirements What do we need to create a digital community visioning process?

Community Visioning Requirements

Easy to use

Accessible

Adds value

Relevant

Easy To Use

Had to be a facilitator, not a barrier

Tool needed to be very intuitive and simple to use

Accessibility

Options for access needed to include:

•  Personal computers for residents, organizations, businesses

•  Public locations with computers

•  Mobile devices - smart phones for individuals to fill it out themselves, tablets for assisted efforts

Adds value

•  Needed to be cheaper and quicker than traditional methods

•  Needed to analyze data quicker or add new analysis options

Relevant

•  A generic survey tool would not be enough

•  Had to be tailored to each specific community

Solutions What did we do?

Collaborative Community Builder

A digital platform that aggregates preferences from individual users into a coherent community vision. These preferences are specific to each community

and generate tailored responses for each vision.

•  Profiling

•  Community Building

•  Vision Analysis

•  Community Analytics

Profiling

Basic demographic data are collected

Pre-entered data creates unique applications of the tool for each community

Community Building

Choose community areas and preferences

Order preferences by priority

Visual Analysis Users review and revise their selections based on real-time responses from whole community

Community Analysis

Preferences can be tallied to provide order of magnitude and ratio data Groups and subgroups of users can be compared

Next Steps Where do we go from here?

Next Steps

•  Gather User Feedback on the usability of the tool

•  Assess the effectiveness of the tool

•  Increase awareness and acceptance of the CCB

Thank you - Questions?